The present invention relates to distributed IP systems and telecommunication systems and, more particularly, to a multi-functional telecommunications system with geographically dispersible components that interact over a distributed IP architecture.
Over the past several decades, voice mail has continued to expand and establish itself as a key element in the successful operations of most businesses. The typical voice mail system today can take on a variety of forms, including a computer card that can operate within a personal computer that is connected to a businesses telephone system, or a computer card or component that is directly integrated into the businesses telephone system, or as a service provided by a telecommunications company.
The common ingredient to each of the voice mail systems available today is that the components that make up the voice mail system must communicate with each other and thus, must be co-located. This can be a great disadvantage for companies that have geographically dispersed offices.
In today's global economy, even small business may have a need for multiple offices for serving clients, interacting with vendors, or various other reasons. The advent of the Internet, email and video conferencing helps to allow such dispersed operations appear more seamless. However, a significant problem that still exists for dispersed offices is having a common telephonic system that operates as a single, co-located system but serves the needs of the various offices. Generally, each office purchases and maintains its own telephone system without any direct interface between the telephone systems of the various offices and without any central control. This can be a costly endeavor in that duplicative hardware must be purchased and maintained at each site. In addition, the logistics of inter-office communication such as call transfers, voice mail retrieval etc. can be complex. Thus, there is a need in the art for a telecommunications system that allows seamless integration for remotely located offices.
In addition, even if a seamless integration of a telephone system is obtained, there still exists a need for personalization of the telephone systems in the various offices. For instance, if the offices are located in different time zones, it may be important to have the ability for each office to uniquely set up the system for handling incoming calls, switching the system to night or weekend mode, entering or deleting individuals from the system etc. Thus, there is a need in the art for a distributed telephone system that provides seamless integration, while at the same time allowing components of the system to be individually programmed and/or maintained at the remote offices.
By incorporating IP technology into a distributed telecommunications platform, additional complexities are encountered. One complexity is that components on the IP side of the telecommunications system cannot communicate directly with the telecommunications network unless they also incorporate a SS7 protocol stack. The industry has addressed this need in the art by utilizing the SIGTRAN protocol between an SS7 gateway and IP based devices. This allows the IP based devices to talk over the SS7 telecommunications network without having to include a full SS7 protocol stack within the IP devices.
Another necessity in modem day telecommunications systems is the deployment of redundancy on critical elements. Adding redundancy in any complex network setting can give rise to many technical hurdles that must be overcome for a successful deployment. One such need in the art is a technique to provide redundancy in a gateway that allows IP based devices to talk over the SS7 telecommunications network. The present invention is directed at such a solution.